Requires a hospice intending to establish a hospice residence to provide notice to the municipality of the site selection and a description of the program

Title of bill

An act to amend the public health law, in relation to site selection of a hospice residence

Purpose

To establish procedures for public notice and consideration of potential sites for hospice residences.

Summary of provisions

Before the department may issue a certificate of operation to a hospice for a hospice residence outside an established nursing home or adult home, the hospice would be required to provide notice to the municipality within whose jurisdiction the hospice residence would be located. (In New York City, the community board would be treated as a "municipality.") The notice to the municipality shall include the location and plan details, and the municipality will have forty days to respond. The municipality may approve the site, suggest alternative sites, or object because of oversaturation which is defined as relating to all types of residential facilities in balance to the need f<:)r a hospice residence. No response by the municipality within forty days is the same as approval.

Prior to the forty day response, the municipality may hold public hearings.

If the hospice notifies the municipality's that a recommended alternative site is not acceptable, the municipality shall have fifteen days to make another recommendation. If that recommendation is not acceptable to the hospice, or if the application for a site approval is declined under the oversaturation test, then either the hospice or the municipality may request a hearing before the commissioner of health who will have thirty days to decide in favor of either party. That decision can be appealed in an Article 78 proceeding before the appellate division.

Justification

A hospice residence is a group home where terminally ill patients receive expert interdisciplinary care services from qualified individuals in a home-like setting. Hospice residences caring for up to eight persons have existed in New York since 1995. More recently, a pilot program was created in 2003 for the purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of hospice residences caring for up to sixteen persons. The value of hospice residences was cited in the memorandum for the new pilot: "the residences have been able to provide a lower cost alternative to patients...by eliminative the need for patient transfers and thus, precluding costly hospital bills and ambulance charges".

However, in the case of at least one hospice residence, the opposition of neighbors has stalled construction of a residence for over four years.

A framework is needed to give communities notice and an opportunity to be heard, and to guide municipalities in assessing a community's need for a hospice residence with fairness and timeliness, and to facilitate the siting once that process has been complied with. This bill is based upon the successful "Padavan's Law", section 41.34 of the Mental Hygiene Law, which governs the site selection for community

residential facilities for the disabled, which has proven to be an effective tool for this purpose since 1978.

Legislative history

2008: A.11241 - Passed Assembly

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

Immediately.